Peace
by IvoryAlchemist
Summary: I knew I couldn't stand watching people fight so hard for something that can't be won; stranded out at sea and swimming in the wrong direction. Death could conquer any love, break any promise, corrupt any innocence and destroy even the purest hope.


"She was reading this." Wilson runs his fingers over the glossy cover of _A Separate Peace._

House nods. "Have you?" 

"No." 

"Good. Its not your kind of book." House twirls his cane in his hands. "Its about loss of innocence." He gave Wilson a pointed look. "You wouldn't like it." 

Wilson nods and flips idly through its pages. "We have to talk, House."

House swallows his blistering, throaty anger like acidic backwash. "I'm not in the mood for a pep-talk, Jimmy." House lets his eyes take their leisurely time moving over the freshly carved tombstone. So pristine, all sharp edges and tight symmetrical lines. So unrealistic. 

"Where's Cuddy?" House cradles the name on his tongue like a great, heavy tragedy that no-one wants to think about. 

_Even his voice has changed, _Wilson thinks, _he doesn't say that name like a dirty word now._

Wilson glances down and shifts back and forth on his feet, his shoes make little craters in the wet muddy ground. "I don't know. She called a few hours ago and said she'd be here in twenty minutes; didn't call again." 

House nods, accepting, seeming to let this slight pass as insignificant in grand scheme of things. He can imagine her flying through her apartment, grabbing everything and getting ready to go before slumping into a heap at the doorway. She's not ready to face this, he knows, not ready to see that everybody's going to die and it's just as horrible and unfair as you fear its going to be. 

House is like that now, Wilson notes, so accepting and peaceful. So not House. 

Wilson leans over and grabs the water he set down on the wet grass, screwing and unscrewing the cap in his fingers. House watches the spiral as it swivels back and forth. 

Silence permeats the graveyard like a fog, broken only by the soft breathing of it two living inhabitants. House scuffs his shoes on the floor and rubs his hands together, shifting his focus back to the grave marker. 

"What are you going to do now that she's gone?" 

_This is why I hate him. _House shakes his head and stretches uncomfortably, disturbed. _This is why I need him._

"I don't know. You?" 

Wilson sighs and shrugs. "Take care of you, no doubt. Cry. Be sad." 

House cocks his head to the side, thinking. _Sad. _The word seemed puny and helpless in this place stuffed with a thousand years of pain; with tension and secrets and love lost and trust gained. 

"I change my mind." 

Wilson stops twisting the cap and stares blankly, teetering between relief of the subject change and fear that House is going to reveal something he's not ready for. 

"About?" 

House looks over at him. "You should read the book." 

Wilson blinks. 

"Its slow at first. Almost boring. But then you start to get pulled in, that's what she said. She said it absorbed her inside it, let her see something poignant and painful without having to experience it. A window to human nature, she said." His voice has lost its characteristic sneer; now it sounds like smooth black asphalt, rolling on forever in the wide open road. "She said one of the main characters dies; Phineas. She said he was my polar opposite in every regard except our purity." 

"You're not dying, House." As he says it, he know it a lie - he knows he's been watching this man die for ten fucking years. But he says it anyway. 

House nods and looks down at his hands. "Death is easy. Death doesn't take anything, life takes effort." He burns the unrepentant grave with a blaming, betrayed glare. "She didn't give up, life gave up for her." His face softens into cool waves of anguish. "Maybe I'm giving up, too. Maybe I'm ready to stop fighting." 

"House," Wilson breathes the name like a prayer, and kneels down next to his friend. "If there's one thing about you I admire more than anything else, its that you never give up. You never quit or stop fighting. This - this is horrible, and unfair, and wrong in every sense of word. But she _knew_you're going to keep going anyway. And she had to have to felt better for it." Wilson sees House's eyes glistening in the artificial yellow light. 

"She doesn't feel anything, Wilson. She's dead. She's dead and she left me - us - here to deal with all the shit she left behind. That's not like her. She wouldn't strand me like this." House looked at Wilson, hard, knowing he was weeping soft wet tears down his grizzled cheeks and not caring. "She didn't want to die, Wilson. That's the worst part of it. The only people that die are the ones that want to live." 

Wilson recoils then, a deep part of him unbalanced and terrified by the thought of life being torn out of her helpless hands. He rubs furiously at his eyes and shakes his head. "No," He murmurs, "no, she knew. She did." 

"You wanna know why I didn't go into Oncology, Wilson?" 

"No, no, no," Wilson chants, sobs choking off his air like he was breathing water. "She accepted this. She knew she was going to die, and she accepted it - I know it!" 

"I didn't go into Oncology because I couldn't make myself believe in fairy tales. I knew I couldn't stand watching people fight so hard for something that can't be won; stranded out at sea and swimming in the wrong direction. Death could conquer any love, break any promise, corrupt any innocence and destroy even the purest hope. That's why I hate life - its just a scenic road-trip to a place that always ends in ugliness and despair. Its bullshit to think that being well-behaved and saying your pleases and thank-you's will save you in the end, because saints and serial killers both die the same way. There's no happily ever after for us, Wilson, this story always ends the same." 

House stands then, leaning heavily into his cane and bending over to tap the stone with his cane, a final show of his tormented grief, before limping, slowly, back to the car. Wilson stands still and silent and perturbed by before the fallen angel, staring out at rows upon rows of blank white arches in the green rolling hills.

_It always ends the same, _he thinks, and he opens up the book to the very last page, sees her trademark handwriting in the bottom margin - _This is pure beauty, _she writes, _an absolute wisdom about life and death obtained only by those who have experienced both._

Wilson looks up at the very last lines of the book. 

_"All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way - if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy."_


End file.
